accessibility

Whether it is a simple drawing of a tree or an intricate painting of a forest, visual art definitely mesmerizes all of us. And through the power of the Internet, we can now access paintings, drawings, and other forms of visual art more easily.

But here’s a thought: How can you appreciate visual art if you cannot see it? Would there still be a way for you to enjoy what others are seeing?

WATERLOO REGION — New provincial standards to improve customer service for people with disabilities is a good change, but just a start to making Ontario accessible to all residents, says the head of a local disability support group.

“It’s great. It’s the first step,” said Bil Smith, executive director of the Independent Living Centre of Waterloo Region, which helps people with disabilities gain greater independence, opportunities and acceptance.

SEATTLE - Most web sites that feature videos do not offer closed captioning, although a bill in Congress would require it. In Seattle, Thomas Verdos, who has had a hearing impairment since birth, says captions make all the difference in understanding the content of the site or program.

"You might compare it to watching television with the sound off. You don't get the story line, nothing's humorous, if you don't have the volume high enough to hear what's being said. Most people don't think about it - they don't have to think about it."

Even though you may be done developing your site, you can still make it accessible for persons with disabilities. It is true that web accessibility experts recommend implementing accessibility at the initial stages of web development.

However, there may be instances when you just recently heard of web accessibility after you have completed your site. Also, you may have heard of web accessibility, but have set it aside for a while, and now you have seen its importance.

(CNET ) -- Yahoo's Victor Tsaran knows how much time Web designers spend agonizing over color and font-width choices when laying out an application. So when he started Yahoo's accessibility push two years ago, he had a tough time arousing sympathy for engineers grousing about how much extra time was needed to create accessibility features.

Fortunately for Tsaran, Yahoo's accessibility manager, he's running into that problem less and less.

Web designers are starting to take accessibility as seriously as button placement or heading layout when they develop their products, improving the Web experience not only for people like Tsaran -- who lost his sight at the age of five -- but for Web users in general.

We are getting ready to teach an accessibility course in the Philippines. To provide more information about the country, read the situation about accessibility. As a developing Asian country, the Philippines realizes the importance of accessibility to its disabled citizen. In this blog post, we will take a look at the present situation of accessibility in this country.

Making your website accessible to people with disabilities is a continuous process. When you have made your site as accessible as possible, you need to do certain steps to maintain its accessibility. These steps, however, are relatively easy and they do not cost much.

Here are the things you can do to ensure your web site maintains accessibility.

Accessibility presents a lot of benefits both to developers and users of websites. But what most people do not know is that accessibility also provides a set of advantages that can affect other major fields of practice.

Take the concept of usability for instance. Generally, accessibility has principles which, if implemented correctly, can greatly increase the usability of a site.